2022
This should actually go to the "News and Updates" category but for obvious reasons, that's reserved for official Google announcements (by Googlers).
So it has been requested several times (like in this topic) and now it's here: we can add names in different languages in Maps. I am in Hungary and I use Maps both in Hungarian and in English. To change the language easily, you simply need to add (or change if it's already there) the URL parameter ?hl=en (for English for instance). Here is my test case (it was me who added it back a few months ago by the way):
and in Hungarian:
(look at the change of the URL parameter at the end of the URL).
Now for obvious reasons, most of the businesses only have names in Hungarian around my place. Now I have switched my Maps to English, edited the place. When clicked on the "Name field", it showed an option to add a name in English:
I added "Angster Memorial" and saved. Since I am a regular MapMaker user (with over 7400 successful and published edits), such "minor" edits do not usually go to a review queue for me but get published instantly:
This is an extremely useful feature, thanks Google! To whom is it actually the most useful however? To those who live in a country where there is no MapMaker at the moment (until now, adding other languages was only possible in MapMaker) but their languages are still listed as possible languages for the Maps. And overall, it is a useful feature as MapMaker is clumsy and it is easier to make edits in Maps anyway so from now on, we do not need to switch between the two apps just to add another name.
Of course, in MapMaker, there are other useful features, too, like adding more names in the same language (primary, official, abbreviated etc.) but this is a great step anyway.
Note 1: this seems to only work on the desktop (web) version of the map. At least I have not found a way to do it in my Android Map App - although I can imagine Google is working on it (and delaying the announcement until that feature is also rolled out).
Note 2: "Angster" used to be an organ manufacturer in my city. Here is the Wikipedia article about the founder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zsef_Angster That memorial is an "interactive" one - it plays organ music, too. Even in small village churches around like this one, there are Angster organs built in - and they still work today.
@Gaieus) Accepted Solutions
Hi @lina707, yes, it does and I use this feature every day. Have you switched languages?
Also, now maps display a smaller font secondary name for places that do not have the name you are browsing the maps in. If there is no manually given name, it displays the category as a name. This way you can see immediately where a manually given name (when it has any sense to add) is missing.
And of course, it works the other way round, too. For a long time, when someone added a new place in maps, it gave the English name by default so in a lot of places where not English is the native tongue, now native names are missing. LG's can easily correct these (and get 5 points per edit immediately) now.
Look at these series of screenshots:
1 Says "Benzinkút" for a place. This means gas/petrol station and should not be here like this because we need the brand here, not the category as a name.
2 Next when I click on it it turns out it does have a name: "OMV" (an Austrian gas/petrol station company).
3 When I go to edit the name it turns out that the English name field was filled in and the Hungarian is not (in the lower field it says "Add Hungarian name").
4 after adding the Hungarian name, I immediately received the "success" email. 🙂
Hi @lina707, yes, it does and I use this feature every day. Have you switched languages?
Also, now maps display a smaller font secondary name for places that do not have the name you are browsing the maps in. If there is no manually given name, it displays the category as a name. This way you can see immediately where a manually given name (when it has any sense to add) is missing.
And of course, it works the other way round, too. For a long time, when someone added a new place in maps, it gave the English name by default so in a lot of places where not English is the native tongue, now native names are missing. LG's can easily correct these (and get 5 points per edit immediately) now.
Look at these series of screenshots:
1 Says "Benzinkút" for a place. This means gas/petrol station and should not be here like this because we need the brand here, not the category as a name.
2 Next when I click on it it turns out it does have a name: "OMV" (an Austrian gas/petrol station company).
3 When I go to edit the name it turns out that the English name field was filled in and the Hungarian is not (in the lower field it says "Add Hungarian name").
4 after adding the Hungarian name, I immediately received the "success" email. 🙂